


Insomnia

by wisdomeagle



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Insomnia, Magic, Queer Themes, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-05-24
Updated: 2004-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-26 12:13:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/965795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomeagle/pseuds/wisdomeagle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tara. Insomnia. S4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insomnia

Tara has never slept easy. Willow can make the most astounding sleeping potion with just a few simple ingredients anyone has lying around their house, if by anyone you mean someone who tends to keep eye of this and toe of that lying around, which these days is everyone Tara knows. Tara knows a lot of witches and other creatures of the night and Willow is really powerful and brews a strong sleeping potion and she's supposed to wake up rested only she hasn't fallen asleep. She's thrashing around in her bed and thoughts are thrashing around in her brain. She wonders where Willow is tonight. She doesn't always come to Tara's room, not always; sometimes she sleeps alone in her dorm snuggled under the snuggly blanket and... snuggled. Tara wants to snuggle someone and wishes for the fifth time that she had a kitty. A sudden fear emerges that Willow is allergic to cats and she wants to call her right now only she knows Willow is probably asleep and possibly out slaying baddies and she doesn't want to disturb her or Buffy or Buffyandherboyfriend who might be sleeping together in Buffy's room only Willow isn't here so Buffy probably isn't there and here she hasn't even _met_ Buffy but she wishes she knew. Knew why Willow wasn't here. 

Tara thinks about this girl who's in her math class and who wears these leather boots and smells like strong, powerful magick and who looked at her and saw the amulet around her neck and _laughed_ and started flirting with the boy behind her. She wonders if she exudes lesbianism the way Will exudes smartfunnysweet &Magic. Mostly magic. Magic that could cause the whole world to light on fire if Willow let it. But Willow never would. Tara might of course. _Demonchilddemonspawndemontara_. But Tara isn't powerful enough and Willow wouldn't let her. Would report her to the Scoobies and the world would not be destroyed because Willow wouldn't let that happen. How would she end the world if she had to, if the world needed ending? She could try a summoning spell but two to ground the spell and control the demon would be better. What if Willow went along with it, if they summoned an apocalypse for their first anniversary, one year after the world ended for the first time because for the first time someone loved Tara. Tiny and awkward Tara, Tara who smells like funny herbs Tara whose mother is dead Tara who lives in that funny old house and whose father won't let her have boys over (but the reason she doesn't date is really that  Tara's a dyke don't tell anyone I told you I wouldn't say anything but I think I caught her _looking_ and Tara is a lesbo--you know what they say about witches) Tara who escaped. She cuts the thought off, throttles it, imagines her mind as just another circle to work spells in. 

They've been getting good, really good, and they can levitate more than pencils now, can levitate the big leather book that Willow took from the magic store one day. She bought it, she swears, and no one would miss it, she also swears, and Tara likes the book that smells like the shop and like Willow and has the imprint of their magic on it, and she takes it and rests her head against the engraving and thinks books are excellent pillows if only she could _sleep_. 

The truth is she wasn't even sure for real that she liked girls until Willow was kissing her one night when the circle was still in place and the Latinate roots were still on her tongue and the scent of sage and candlewax was especially strong and there was Willow looking scared but not as scared as she felt on the inside, where everything was funny topsy turvy like a levitation spell she'd tried when she was ten that sent a grand piano crashing _down_ , which broke the piano and broke the floor and her mother beamed at her and said she had real power if she could just learn to think with her soul instead of her brain. She didn't understand what that meant until Willowtaste overwhelmed all her senses and she broke the circle, intentionally broke the space it had taken so much energy to create and just let herself collapse into Willow. Then she knew with precision and clarity and every sense, magical and mortal, that she possessed that there would never could never be anyone else. No one else ever just Willow. 

She is so tired. It's her freshman year of college and already she's thought herself to exhaustion. She tries to imagine being a senior, writing a thesis, taking final final exams and graduating, like high school graduation only, this being Sunnydale, probably with more demons (other than herself of course) and maybe more hope. There is some hope in Sunnydale and there was none back home which was odd because here the chances of getting bitten by a vampire or loosing your voice to creepy mime demons are high but back home, the chances of escaping were practically non-existent. Then she used to lie awake at night and think about all the colleges she wanted to attend and now she sits up in bed, suddenly, and realizes she has done it escaped is _here_. 

She closes her eyes and imagines Willow, legs folded, arms behind her head, thinking. She likes watching Willow think. She imagines Willow saying, "Is my girl sleepy?" and then says aloud, "Yes, come to bed," and then Willow walks over and lies down on top of the blanket and kisses her forehead and kisses her shoulders and she is tired, so tired, and Willow is soft, so soft, and the moon is waning gibbous and Willow's hair is red like rubies (for health) like copper, like pennies pretty pennies pretty so pretty so sleepy so


End file.
